“Svante Lindberg?”
“That’s right.”
She and Johannes had had a huge row at home on the day he appointed Lindberg his undersecretary. On the face of it Lindberg was a carbon copy of Johannes, with the same energy and military heartiness. But in fact he was something quite different. While Forsell thought well of everything and everybody—until the opposite proved true—Lindberg was always calculating and manipulative.
“What can Svante tell me?” Blomkvist said.
Whatever suits his interests, she thought.
“What happened on Everest,” she said, wondering if she was betraying Johannes with those words. But Johannes had failed her by not telling her everything that had taken place on the mountain. She got up, gave Blomkvist a hug and thanked him once more, and went back to the intensive care unit.
CHAPTER 18
August 26–27, Night
Chief Inspector Ulrike Jensen was conducting a first interview with the complainant, Thomas Müller, at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen. He had been admitted at 11:10 at night with burns to his arms and upper chest. Jensen was forty-four and a mother of small children, and had spent many years dealing with sexual offences. She had lately been transferred to the violent crimes squad and often worked the night shift—it was what functioned best for her family at that point—so had had her fair share of confused and drunken witness statements. But what she was hearing now took the prize.
“I appreciate that you’re in a lot of pain, and the morphine will be affecting you,” she said. “But can we try to keep to the facts and concentrate on an accurate description.”
“I’ve never seen eyes like that,” he mumbled.
“So you’ve said. But you need to be more specific. Did this woman have any distinguishing features?”
“She was young and short with black hair, and she talked like a ghost.”
“And how do ghosts talk?”
“Without any feeling, or rather…as if her mind was on something else. She wasn’t really there.”
“What did she say? Can you please repeat it so we can get a clearer idea of what actually happened?”
“She said that she never ironed her own clothes, so she wasn’t very good at it and it was important for me to lie still.”
“That’s pretty harsh.”
“It was insane.”
“Is that all?”
“She said she would come for me again if I didn’t…”
“If you didn’t what?”
Müller squirmed in his hospital bed and gave her a helpless look.
“If you didn’t what?” she repeated.
“Leave my wife alone. I was not to see her again. I was to get a divorce.”
“Your wife is travelling, you said?”
“Yes, she…” He was muttering inaudibly.
“Have you done something to her?” Jensen said.
“I haven’t done a thing. She’s the one who…”
“What?”
“Left me.”
“Why has she left you, do you suppose?”
“She’s a fucking…”
He was on the point of saying something terrible, but was smart enough not to, and Jensen could tell there was a history which would not be very pretty either. But she put it aside for the time being.
“Do you recall anything else that might help us?” she said.
“The woman said I was ‘out of luck.’ ”
“What did she mean by that, do you think?”
“That she’d been keeping a whole load of shit bottled up inside her all summer long and had gone more or less crazy as a result.”
“That doesn’t tell us much, does it?”
“How am I supposed to know what the fuck she meant?”
“And how did it end?”
“She tore the tape off my mouth and repeated everything again.”
“That you should stay away from your wife?”
“And I will too. I never want to see her again.”
“OK,” she said. “That sounds like a plan for now. So you haven’t spoken to your wife this evening either?”
“I don’t even know where she is, I told you. But for God’s sake…”
“Yes?”
“You’ve got to get a move on and do something. This person is completely insane. She’s lethal. She’s going to kill someone next.”
“We’ll do our best,” Jensen said. “But it looks as if—”
“As if what?”
“As if all the surveillance cameras in the neighbourhood were out of action just then, so we’ve got very little to go on,” she continued, suddenly feeling very tired of her job.
* * *
—
It was just after midnight and Salander was in a taxi on her way in from Arlanda airport, reading up on a divorce lawyer recommended by Annika Giannini, when she received an encrypted message from Blomkvist. She was too tired and out of sorts to want to look at it, and she stared vacantly out of the window. What was the matter with her?
She had liked Paulina. Maybe in her own twisted way she had even loved her. And how had she gone about showing it? She had sent her home to her parents in Munich, heartbroken. She had assaulted her husband, as if taking revenge on him would somehow compensate for her own shortcomings in love. She could not bring herself to kill her own sister—who had caused so much harm—but would have put an end to Thomas Müller’s life in Copenhagen without batting an eyelid.
As she was sitting on top of him, holding the iron, images of Zalachenko and Bjurman the lawyer, and Teleborian the psychiatrist and all sorts of other brutes had flashed through her mind. It was as if the floodgates had burst open. As if she wanted revenge for the whole of her life, and it had taken all the self-control she could muster to stop her from going completely off the rails.
She had to get a grip on herself. Otherwise it would just go on like this: hesitation where action was needed, and madness in the place of calm.
Some part of what had happened on Tverskoy Boulevard had knocked her off balance. It was a fresh realization from her past. Not just the fact that she had lain there powerless when Zala came to fetch Camilla at night. There was her mother, too. What had she known? Had she too shut her eyes to the truth? This thought was constantly chafing at her, so much so that it made her frightened of herself—frightened by her indecision, frightened that she would be a useless warrior in what inevitably awaited: her life’s crucial battle.